Content uploaded by Paul Jobin
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Paul Jobin on Jun 10, 2021
Content may be subject to copyright.
Environmental movements in Taiwan’s anthropocene:
a civic eco-nationalism
Paul Jobin
In Environmental Movements and Politics of the Asian Anthropocene (ed. by Paul Jobin, Ming-sho Ho and Hsin-
Huang Michael Hsiao, Singapore: ISEAS), pp.37-78.
Abstract: Despite the tremendous geopolitical pressure—or perhaps owing to it—Taiwanese civil society
has consolidated the country’s democracy over the last two decades, resulting in the excellent scores on
various democracy indexes. I argue in this chapter that environmental movements have played a
significant role in this process, through what I call civic eco-nationalism, or a civic form of ecological
nationalism. After introducing this argument, its theoretical framework, and the conditions that gave rise
to it, this chapter reviews the main characteristics of Taiwan’s environmental movements during the last
two decades, through the existing literature—which is abundant both in Chinese and English—and my
own observation since 2008. A good deal of fieldwork was conducted as a participating observer, which
enables an ethnographic immersion over the long run.
37
2
ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENTS IN
TAIWAN’S ANTHROPOCENE: A CIVIC
ECO-NATIONALISM
Paul Jobin*
Over the last two decades, despite threats and pressure from China,
Taiwan has consolidated its democracy and its identity in the
international community. So, too, have its environmental movements.
Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao (1999) has described how the emergence
role in the popular mobilization that put an end to forty years of
authoritarianism, paving the way for the country’s democratization.
streams
mobilization as follows: (1) a grassroots, victim-conscious, anti-pollution
movement against heavy industry; (2) an urban middle-class movement
for the conservation of natural habitats and animal species; and (3) an
anti-nuclear movement, which the author detached from anti-pollution
protests to emphasize a greater level of public concern and connection
with national politics.
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 37 9/4/21 3:11 PM
38 Paul Jobin
Nearly twenty years later, in addition to these three streams of
mobilization, Hsiao (2017) notes the emergence of two additional
movements: 4) a movement against high-tech industrial hazards that
arose around the turn of the century and bears characteristics distinct
from the initial anti-pollution protests (see also Tu 2007, 2017a; Tu and
Lee 2009; Chiu 2011, 2014); and 5) a movement for energy transition
toward a low-carbon society (see also Hsu et al. 2016). Kuei-tien Chou
(2015, 2017) further argues that Taiwan’s anti-pollution movements
are now reshaping their episteme to cope with the new challenges of
hand with a struggle to reduce the intensive consumption of energy
and natural resources like water. Indeed, among the three hundred
associations registered by the Environmental Protection Administration
(EPA), around thirty claimed that global warming is their main matter
of concern.1
This trend suggests that Taiwan’s environmental movements have
society and its solid connections with the international community. The
notion of the Anthropocene has also prompted academic discussions,
though thus far they remain limited to a small circle (e.g., Lin 2018;
Chuang 2020; Lee 2020; Chuang and Gong 2020). But as Hsiao (1999)
also noted, the impossibility for Taiwan to sign various international
lessened the pressure of global environmentalism on the island. Taiwan’s
has no listing in the Global Footprint Network and is referred to as
“Chinese Taipei” in the Climate Change Performance Index.
We do at least have some indicators of Taiwan’s “ecological balance
sheet” as compared to other countries. Yale University’s Environmental
Performance Index not only refers to Taiwan as “Taiwan”, it gives the
island a good ranking: although its overall score has decreased from
79.1 (out of 100) in 2002 to 72.84 in 2018, Taiwan remains in the top
thirty globally, right after New Zealand, Japan, and Australia in the
“Chinese Taipei” is both a victim and a perpetuator of global heating:
in certain years, the island is one of the countries most exposed to
2 but it also ranks among the
carbon emissions and other greenhouses gases.3
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 38 9/4/21 3:11 PM
Environmental Movements in Taiwan’s Anthropocene 39
Situated at the convergence of four tectonic plates, Taiwan
experiences intense seismic activity. For geologists, the island is
located on a “destructive plate boundary”. In addition, because of its
tropical and subtropical weather, Taiwan is subject to typhoons, which
are becoming ever more ferocious with global heating. The violent
This combination of geological and meteorological factors makes the
earth science (Latour 2014; Jobin 2018a, 2020), and puts Taiwan at the
forefront of the Anthropocene.
well, Taiwan is a “critical zone”. Far from abating, the pressure from
the Chinese regime has continued to grow, and uncertainties remain
about strategic support from the United States. And while it remains
challenges of the Anthropocene (such as the threat to its populated
urban shoreline from rising sea levels), what is certain is that the
has been a basic component of social movements in Taiwan for the
country’s democracy over the last two decades, resulting in the excellent
scores on various democracy indexes.4 I argue in this chapter that
through what I call civic eco-nationalism, or a civic form of ecological
nationalism. After introducing this argument, its theoretical framework,
and the conditions that gave rise to it, this chapter reviews the main
characteristics of Taiwan’s environmental movements during the last
enables an ethnographic immersion over the long run.5
The environmental movements are organized into three sections. The
policy and public opinion: in nationwide concerns, such as nuclear
energy and air pollution, and then with regard to local matters, as in
cases involving indigenous peoples. The third looks at mobilizations
against private companies, using the courts as a means to effect
change.
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 39 9/4/21 3:11 PM
40 Paul Jobin
A Civic Eco-nationalism
of research. When the two issues are discussed together, they are most
often devised within the critical prism of prevention against “eco-
fascism”, especially in the context of Western Europe (cf. Stephens 2001;
Biehl et al. 2011). Although this remark is less pertinent in the Asian
context, studies of how ecology and nationalism interact nevertheless
remain scarce overall.
The work of Jane Dawson (1995, 1996) is thus all the more precious,
as her thorough study of the post-Chernobyl USSR presented the
intersection between ecology and nationalism as a research topic worthy
of a nuanced approach. After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, anti-nuclear
movements emerged all over the Soviet Union. Curiously, as Dawson
showed, after the mutation of the USSR into the Federation of Russia
completely. And yet, the mobilizations against nuclear plants had
played an instrumental role in this drastic geopolitical transformation.
Dawson called this mix of environmentalism and nationalism ecological
nationalism, or eco-nationalism. She further showed that in small republics
like Armenia, Lithuania, and Crimea, the anti-nuclear movement clearly
served as a surrogate cause for criticism of Moscow’s colonialism. But
the anti-nuclear movement’s usefulness as a safe proxy for national
independence struggles disappeared with the fall of the USSR, and
opposition to nuclear power plants plummeted. Thereafter, despite the
of these countries resumed their development of nuclear power plants.
nationalism. But contrary to what Dawson observed in the case of the
post-Chernobyl USSR, Taiwan’s environmental movements have not
been hiding a nationalist purpose behind their ecological discourse,
and environmental groups not only remain numerous and very
active, they have become an essential part of Taiwan’s civil society. I
therefore argue that, in Taiwan, environmentalism is not a surrogate
cause or a substitute for nationalism but a congruent factor. Ecological
mobilizations do not only resist against techno-authoritarianism, they
share a common goal of defending Taiwan’s democracy. This includes
protecting its de facto independence against the threat from China.
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 40 9/4/21 3:11 PM
Environmental Movements in Taiwan’s Anthropocene 41
At the end of the 1970s, ecological worries developed in parallel
with the rise of a Taiwanese “native identity” (bentu yishi), or the
“indigenization movement” (benduhua yundong), against the China-
centred ideology of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party of China, or
KMT), the one-party émigré regime in Taiwan. In that context, claims
for environmental protection (huanbao) became a way to show concern
for Taiwan (Jobin 2010, p. 47). The early discourse of environmental
leaders such as Edgar Lin attributed the KMT’s lack of care for Taiwan’s
environment to the fact that its ultimate goal was the recovery of China
(fangong dalu tongyi Zhongguo). Or, as aptly put by Linda Arrigo:
Taiwan’s environmental morass was not merely the result of a tardy
awakening to the ills of rapid industrialization, but the outcome of a
particular political and economic order, which [can be summarized]
launching pad for retaking mainland China (Arrigo 1994, p. 23; see also
Arrigo and Puleston 2006).
Departing from such a China-centred identity, Hsiao’s (1987) early
description of Taiwan’s environmental movement was untitled “We
have only one Taiwan” (Women zhi you yige Taiwan), to make it clear
that there was no way back to the “ancestor’s land” (zuguo), and that
As Lepesant observes more recently (2018, p. 108), environmental
issues nowadays “constitute an important space for the politicization
of young Taiwanese citizens”, creating “a sense of crisis and urgency
[…] that the economic model that brought prosperity to Taiwan is
now on the verge of collapse”. He concludes that “environmental
state”, and rally “the young generation to a political commitment on
the margins of the partisan sphere” (p. 118, my translation). I fully
between a growing concern for ecology and an attachment to Taiwan
as a democratic nation extends beyond the young to a large segment
of the population, starting with environmental activists. Moreover,
while broadly non-partisan, these activists will enter into temporary
will during presidential and legislative elections, when concern for
Taiwan’s precarious status takes on a higher priority.
Still, the explicit raison d’être of environmental activists is not
partisan politics but ecology; it is their main daily concern, their “core
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 41 9/4/21 3:11 PM
42 Paul Jobin
attachment to Taiwan’s de facto independence or, if they do, it is with
many nuances from one individual to another. We therefore need to
read between the lines of environmental discourses, beyond explicit
narratives, and consider the general orientation of environmentalism,
politics, as well as with foreign actors.
Borrowing John DeWitt’s (1994) notion of civic environmentalism,
Ching-ping Tang (2003) observed in mid-1990s Taiwan the emergence
of this phenomenon: in addition to the grassroots mobilizations of
the 1980s focusing on the “narrow” and “self-interested” problem of
compensation for industrial pollution, “newly created civic groups
engaged in issues of a broader public interest” (Tang 2003, pp. 1036–
37). Although I would not label the early grassroots mobilizations
Boudet 2012; Hager and Haddad 2015), I think the idea of a civic form
of environmentalism can still apply today to denote a broad public
interest and a scaling up of environmental justice topics.
I further posit that civic environmentalism is compatible with
nationalism. The issue of nationalism and its interaction with democracy
is a complex and hotly debated problem. Contrary to a common
view casting nationalism as the main cause of ethnic hatred and as
incompatible with the spirit of liberal democracy, the evolution of
Taiwan over the last two decades offers a perfect example that the
democratic society (Chuang 2013; Muyard 2018).
As explained by Craig Calhoun in his fundamental book Nations
Matter (2007; in particular, chapter 6), ethnic and civic nationalism are
not necessarily antithetical, but I believe it is important to explicitly
retain the adjective civic to emphasize the non-xenophobic character of
this ecological nationalism and its substantial contribution to Taiwanese
civil society.6 For a majority of ecological activists have gradually come
to care for the future of Taiwan as a free democracy, through a civic
form of engagement that is perhaps naive but is at least faithful to
both the causes of ecology and democracy. Despite many loopholes,
such as recurrent irregularities in Environmental Impact Assessment
procedures and the lack of severe punishment against persistent
polluters, most activists would probably adhere to the view that
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 42 9/4/21 3:11 PM
Environmental Movements in Taiwan’s Anthropocene 43
thanks to the democratization of the country.
Taiwan, where the rejection of authoritarianism is at least as strong as
the motivations for ecological engagement. An anecdote illustrates this
resistance. In July 2017, a group of environmental activists in Taiwan
noticed that Greenpeace was mapping Taiwan as a part of China. This
sparked a controversy on the Taiwanese web, with netizens turning
citizens, while it showed no concern for Taiwan as a democracy
threatened by China’s authoritarian regime (Ho 2017).
Taiwan’s nationalism should not, however, be misunderstood simply
as anti-China sentiment. If the resistance against Beijing’s irredentism
has played a crucial role, the development of Taiwanese nationalism
is mostly the outcome of an explicit move towards a distinct identity,
resulting from a specific historical path, and correlated with a
national project resolutely engaged with democracy, especially among
the younger generations. Over the years, this civic nationalism has
forged strong links with the environmental movement. Based on my
mix of nationalism, ecology, and the spirit of democracy.
Following on previous discussions of civic nationalism (Calhoun
2007; Hsiau and Wang 2016; and Muyard 2012, 2018) and civic
environmentalism (DeWitt 1994 and Tang 2003), I posit that civic
environmentalism crisscrosses between ecology and democracy when
it stresses the importance of freedoms of speech and assembly, as well
as elections and an independent judiciary. In addition, civic nationalism
includes the protection of national sovereignty and the promotion
components of the nation (ethnic groups, sub-nations of indigenous
peoples, religious and sexual minorities), which implies efforts to contain
ethnic hatred and homophobic movements. Figure 2.1 sums up the
three spheres composing civic eco-nationalism: nationalism, concern
for ecology, and the spirit of democracy. Eco-nationalism stands at
the intersection of ecology and nationalism.
Civic eco-nationalism may not be the biggest sphere of a national
try to show, in Taiwan, it gives a decisive impulse to environmental
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 43 9/4/21 3:11 PM
44 Paul Jobin
movements. In other words, I do not mean to claim that Taiwan’s
environmentalism is always about nationalism. For instance, in the
class actions presented in the last section, the civic sphere is clearly
the more decisive element. Yet the national sphere is never entirely
absent from these mobilizations.
The three composing spheres of civic eco-nationalism: nationalism, ecology,
and democratic spirit
Notes: : Eco-nationalism; : Civic nationalism; : Civic environmentalism, or ecological
democratic spirit; : Civic eco-nationalism
FIGURE 2.1
Protecting “Our Island”
Chang and Slovic (2016) have described Taiwan as an epicentre of
with our critical epoch of ecological crisis.
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 44 9/4/21 3:11 PM
Environmental Movements in Taiwan’s Anthropocene 45
A good manifestation of Taiwan’s eco-criticism, and what I describe
here as a civic eco-nationalism, is the weekly public television broadcast
Women de dao (Our Island), which was launched at the founding
of the Public Television Service in 1998. The lead producer is the
colleagues Yu Li-ping and Chang Dabbie Daiping explain, the initial
idea of the title and its insular focus was to explore the country’s
seashore and ocean life; under martial law, the seashore had been
novel approach.7 The programme is characterized by a mix of sharp
in presenting numerous initiatives to protect biodiversity, develop
alternative energies, etc. The programme thus offers other journalists,
scholars, and environmental activists a reliable and easy-access databank,
available on YouTube.
Another small-scale example of Taiwan’s civic eco-nationalism can
be seen in the numerous initiatives of “touring around the island”
(huandao) for the sake of environmental protection, usually abbreviated
as huanbao (for huanjing baohu), a catchword for various purposes, from
collecting cigarette butts, plastic, and other waste, to more systematic
citizen science with regular observation of the evolution of seashore
pollution. The practice of huandao has become particularly popular
among youth, either just for fun, as a self-imposed rite of passage,
or to have physical contact with their natural surroundings. Many
ride bicycles or motorbikes, or walk or hitchhike, while others take
the train. But making a civic commitment such as cleaning up trash
adds deeper meaning to the trip. The mode of participation varies
from individuals on their own, or on collective tours arranged by
local environmental activists or schoolteachers (e.g., Huang 2019), to
of Chinese folk religions in Taiwan.
An early sign of huandao, but with a stronger political meaning,
dates back to 1994, when pro-democracy movement leader Lin Yi-
hsiung launched the “Bitter March of One Thousand Kilometres” (qianli
kuxing), an island-wide pilgrimage to protest the construction of Nuclear
Power Plant Number Four (NPP4) (Ho 2018, p. 452). He undertook a
similar march in 2009 with Cheng Li-chun (who thereafter served as
Minister of Culture), under the slogan “The People as Master” (renmin
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 45 9/4/21 3:11 PM
46 Paul Jobin
zuozhu); in addition to a referendum on NPP4, they called for a second
referendum to circumvent a commercial treaty with China. This last
example suggests rather well how environmental issues may become
entangled with nationalism. Before we look more in depth at other
cases, the next section presents basic features of Taiwanese politics,
with a focus on their linkage to environmental issues.
Green and Blue Camps
For forty years after the end of World War Two, Taiwan was under
the authoritarian rule of the KMT, controlled by Generalissimo Chiang
Kai-shek, followed by his son Chiang Ching-kuo. In September 1986,
the opposition was able to launch the Democratic Progressive Party
(DPP), and one year later, martial law was lifted. In order to maintain
its position, the KMT was compelled to adapt to the democratization
of the island’s institutions. Meanwhile, the DPP continued to develop,
but it was not until 2000 that its candidate, Chen Shui-bian, was able
to win the presidential election. Chen won another four-year mandate
in 2004, but in 2008, the KMT and its candidate Ma Ying-jeou returned
to power for two consecutive mandates. Their rule ended in 2016,
when the DPP made a triumphal comeback with the election of Tsai
Ing-wen. The entire period since the end of martial law has been a
like the missile crisis of 1996 when China threatened to attack, and the
attempted assassination of President Chen Shui-bian and Vice-President
Annette Lu during their 2004 campaign for re-election.
In the 1970–80s, the physical pain and frustration from exposure to
chronic industrial pollution encouraged people to express discontent (Lii
and Lin 2000); these protests contributed to the chain of events that
put an end to martial law. In the 1990s, protests against petrochemical
plants and other big polluters grew in importance. These protests were
concrete signs of democratization, and they contributed to challenging
the DPP than in the KMT, hence the tendency for partisan polarization
thereafter. The Taiwan Environmental Protection Union (TEPU, Taiwan
huanbao lianmeng), for example, was inclined to become dependent on
the DPP (Ho 2003). The Green Party Taiwan (GPT) founded in 1996
was an attempt to break with such dependency, but it never managed
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 46 9/4/21 3:11 PM
Environmental Movements in Taiwan’s Anthropocene 47
to obtain parliamentary seats despite a gradual increase in popularity
after 2008 (Fell and Peng 2017).
structures the political landscape of many contemporary democracies,
the fault line of Taiwanese politics lies in a split between the so-called
blue and green camps, or roughly speaking, between pro-China and
pro-independence partisans, with the former led by the KMT and the
latter by the DPP. The “green” designation derives from the DPP’s
white cross on a green background.8 As we will see below, the map
of Taiwan is often used as a symbol during environmental protests.
Nonetheless, the green camp should not be misunderstood as an
with big polluters, provoking recurrent friction with environmental
activists who react more and more critically to the gap between electoral
promises and post-election policies. Ho (2016) observes that both the
DPP and the KMT have often contradicted their respective ideologies
the incumbents, it is therefore crucial to minimize the gap between
the initiatives taken and the party’s traditional line.
So far, the KMT and DPP have dominated the political landscape
and other parties have never really challenged this domination or the
blue-green split of Taiwanese politics; this includes those with legislative
seats, such as the blue camp’s People First Party, or the green’s Taiwan
Solidarity Union and New Power Party. However, the past decade has
seen the Taiwanese polity undergo a substantial evolution.
especially in the green camp. In the 1990s, radical leftists had very little
jobs to China have nurtured a “collapsing generation” (bengshidai) of
those born between 1970 and 1990 (Lin et al. 2011). Compared to the
generation of their parents, who had greater economic opportunities
despite their lower level of education, it has become much harder
somewhat similar to that observed in Japan and Western Europe
beginning in the 1990s. Added to the growing threat that China
has become for Taiwanese democracy, this social transformation has
contributed to generating a stronger left wing within the green camp,
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 47 9/4/21 3:11 PM
48 Paul Jobin
that is, a leftist sub-branch of Taiwan’s independence partisans (zuodu).
of March–April 2014 against the incumbent KMT’s secret commercial
agreement with China (Ho 2019).
A more recent development is the emergence of populist leaders,
which has disrupted the rules of the game. This phenomenon started
traditional divide between the blue and green camps with an ambivalent
stand on cross-Strait politics (Hsiao 2019). Further upheaval came in
2018–19, when Han Kuo-yu and Terry Gou began to deeply disturb
the KMT’s long system of patronage with their unconventional styles.
of the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan, or to the case of Narendra
Modi and India’s Congress Party; these leaders develop direct contact
with the people to bypass the complexities of institutional mediation
(Kenny 2017). The difference in Taiwan is that several indices suggest
The Anti-Nuclear Movement: From Renaissance to
Radicalism
In the history of environmental movements in Taiwan, the anti-nuclear
and its intimate link with partisan politics. By the time the DPP was
founded in the mid-1980s, Taiwan already had three nuclear plants
operating, producing half of its electricity, and the construction of a
operating plants, followed soon after by the Chernobyl accident, aroused
considerable concern among scientists, leading to the birth of a large
opposition movement with a particular focus on the construction of
NPP4, located not far from Taipei (Hsiao 1999, pp. 37–38). In 2000,
Chen Shui-bian was elected with a promise to cancel the NPP4 project.
But the KMT, which still controlled the parliament, blocked this effort
and went so far as to drive an impeachment recall against President
Chen, provoking a severe state crisis. Chen was finally forced to
resume the construction, which many anti-nuclear activists interpreted
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 48 9/4/21 3:11 PM
Environmental Movements in Taiwan’s Anthropocene 49
as a betrayal. But the ultimate fate of NPP4 has yet to be resolved, as
its controversial nature keeps it at the centre of an ongoing political
tug of war.
presidency (2008–12) were a sort of dark tunnel for the anti-nuclear
movement and many other environmental mobilizations. Nonetheless,
during this period there emerged a new generation of activists, like the
Green Citizens’ Action Alliance (GCAA), who were more grassroots-
based and autonomous from the DDP compared to the scientist-led
TEPU (Jobin 2010; Ho 2014a, 2018; Grano 2015).
The nuclear disaster of March 2011 in Fukushima reinvigorated
new anti-nuclear groups, such as the Stop Nukes Now coalition (Ho
2014a, 2018; Grano 2015, 2017; cf. D-S. Chen 2011). The Ma government
maintained its plan to bring NPP4 to completion, but politicians
could no longer ignore or minimize the risk attached to the country’s
nuclear plants.
Movement of March–April 2014. This considerable mobilization against a
secret trade deal with China provoked a major turnover in the political
scene. The GCAA and activists from the Stop Nukes Now coalition
played an active role in the successful twenty-three-day occupation of
the parliament. As Grano (2017, pp. 166–67) emphasizes, anti-nuclear
activists and other young protesters shared a common rejection of
groups, several other grassroots environmental organizations, such
as Citizens of the Earth, Taiwan, played an instrumental role in the
9 Ho (2019, pp. 74–79) further observes that the
movement can be traced back to early initiatives around 2008–9 by
groups of students, such as the Wild Strawberry Movement and the
Taiwan Rural Front for land justice (tudi zhengyi).
Anti-nuclear activists were nevertheless worried by the declining
interest in the nuclear issue. At the end of April 2014, seventy-three-
year-old prominent politician Lin Yi-hsiung held a hunger strike against
NPP4. As a senior pro-democracy leader and former DPP chairman,
well-respected across partisan lines, his dramatic act kindled a wave
of sympathy across the country, causing embarrassment for the
government.10 It also spurred young anti-nuclear activists and leaders
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 49 9/4/21 3:11 PM
50 Paul Jobin
of disruptive street protests that ended in clashes with the police. These
radical actions broke with the past moderation of anti-nuclear rallies
and, combined with Lin’s hunger strike, eventually compelled the
incumbent pro-nuclear KMT to suspend NPP4’s start of operations. For
Ho (2018), the decisive factor was the emergence of a militant citizen
movement led by a new generation of more radical activists.
Selected sites of environmental disputes in Taiwan
Source: QGIS and Natural Earth.
MAP 2.1
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 50 9/4/21 3:11 PM
Environmental Movements in Taiwan’s Anthropocene 51
After a period of hesitation at the beginning of her mandate in
the enforcement of a “nuclear free homeland” by 2025. But as we will
see below, this decision has once again been challenged by the KMT.
“One Sky, but Two Taiwans”
The movement against air pollution (fan[kong]wu yundong) is another
example of an aggregation of local mobilizations that has gradually
scaled up to force awareness of this major public health concern and
turn it into an important electoral issue.
Although the urban areas of northern Taiwan (Taipei, Taoyuan,
well as long-range transports from China in winter, the problem of air
pollution has been resented with more bitterness in the South around
Kaohsiung City, and in the Central West area around Taichung City and
Yunlin County, where heavy industries like steel mills, petrochemical
have been more often exposed to red alerts and “purple explosions”
(zibao) of air pollutants than other areas of the island.11
The movement against air pollution has carried on the legacy of early
battles against the hazards of heavy industry, in places like Houchin and
Linyuan districts in Kaohsiung, which have been organized into self-
help associations (ziqiuhui) around local temples (Hsiao 1988; Ho 2005b,
2014b; Lu 2016). Another hotspot has been the fence-line communities
around the petrochemical zone of the Sixth Naphtha Cracker (controlled
by Formosa Plastics) in Yunlin and Changhua counties. The dramatic
increase of cancer incidence, less than ten years after the cracker’s
start of operations in 1998, has attracted the attention of public health
researchers, lawyers, and activists.12
to extend the zone by Kuokuang Petrochemical triggered a nationwide
opposition movement (Ho 2014b, 2016; Grano 2015).
A new wave of actors in the movement is the urban middle-
their children’s health of regular exposure to carcinogenic pollutants
like PM2.5 (Chen and Ho 2017). This concern has been particularly
strong in Kaohsiung and Taichung and has attracted the solidarity of
Taipei-based scholars and environmental organizations. For instance,
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 51 9/4/21 3:11 PM
52 Paul Jobin
on 19 February 2017, Nobel Prize chemistry laureate Lee Yuan-Tseh
and other celebrities joined thousands of people for a demonstration
in Taichung City under the banner of “One Sky, but Two Taiwans”
(yige tiankong, liangge Taiwan), a slogan that decries the geographical
Figures 2.2–2.4). The protesters stressed the responsibility of heavy
industry and the central government’s lack of commitment to solving
the pollution problem in South and Central Taiwan.
FIGURE 2.2
Demonstration against air pollution in the shape of Taiwan with the banner “One
Sky, but Two Taiwans”, in Taichung, 19 February 2017
Source: Apple Daily.
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 52 9/4/21 3:11 PM
Environmental Movements in Taiwan’s Anthropocene 53
Demonstration against air pollution in Taichung, 19 February 2017.
Top photo: a school teacher with his students wearing paper hats in the
shape of smokestacks. Bottom photo: personalities on stage, including Nobel
Prize winner Lee Yuan-Tseh.
Source: Paul Jobin.
FIGURES 2.3–2.4
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 53 9/4/21 3:11 PM
54 Paul Jobin
The causes of chronic episodes of “purple explosions”, as well as
orange and red alerts, have been the topic of heated disputes among
specialists. Researchers working with the EPA tend to emphasize
the diversity of sources (i.e., not only industries, but also vehicles,
merchant ships, etc.), as well as seasonal and geographic factors.
These factors explain why even towns in non-industrialized areas in
central Taiwan, like Chiayi and Nantou counties, have had bouts of
record pollution, inspiring grassroots initiatives to reduce emissions
from motorcycles or those resulting from burning plant waste and,
in a common religious practice, incense and paper money (Liu 2019).
However, for other experts and environmental organizations, the main
Firms like Formosa Plastics and Taipower have shown a special gift
for this exercise.
Another tactic for these big polluters is to shift the blame onto vehicle
emissions, and long-range transports from China, which account for
up to 40 per cent of total annual air pollution in Taiwan on average
according to certain specialists, but no more than 30 according to others
point to air pollutants from China as the main source of air pollution,
but this argument was not convincing. According to a survey conducted
for air pollution in Taiwan?”, 37 per cent of respondents put industry
in third with a relatively low 14 per cent.13 While the Taiwanese may
fear a military attack by China, when it comes to air pollution, they
do not feel overwhelmed by a “Chinese invasion” of toxic air. Eco-
Data, of course, is not monolithic; where it originates and how it
PM2.5 has been gradually decreasing over the last ten years throughout
the country, although the south (the region of Kaohsiung) and the
central west (Taichung) continue to bear the brunt of it (see Figure
2.5). However, independent data-sharing platforms of citizen science
have increased awareness of the risk.14 From time to time, discrepancies
between these data sets spark debate on social media, with concerned
citizens or environmental groups accusing the EPA of falsifying its
computations (Jheng 2019).
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 54 9/4/21 3:11 PM
Environmental Movements in Taiwan’s Anthropocene 55
Both scientists and grassroots mobilizations of citizen scientists have
played a role in this movement (Tu 2019). In contrast with the nuclear
issue, characterized by a rather pro-nuclear blue camp and a generally
anti-nuclear green camp (excluding a period of ambiguous positions
during the presidency of Chen Shui-bian, and brief opportunistic moves
from the KMT), no such clear-cut distinction can be made in the debate
on air pollution. What can be seen instead is a clash between activists
on the one hand, and the EPA, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, and
heavy industry on the other hand, each side backed by arguments
from different groups of scientists.
A structural element of the debate is the division between the North
and South of the island. This opposition has been a constant factor
in Taiwanese politics (with a broadly pan-green South and pan-blue
North), and is marked by differing sociological characteristics (with
the South experiencing higher rates of unemployment, lower levels of
education, and steady out-migration towards the North). In the next
section, we will see how air pollution and the nuclear issue facilitated
central western Taiwan.
PM2.5 in Taiwan, 2009–18
Source: Data from Taiwan EPA (graph by Gordon Shih-hao Jheng).
FIGURE 2.5
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 55 9/4/21 3:11 PM
56 Paul Jobin
Political Uses of Environmental Issues
and factories, prompting an apology from President Tsai and the
resignation of the Minister of Economic Affairs. The outage was
caused by human error concerning gas supply from a power station,
which had little to do with the energy mix. But the KMT jumped
at the chance to simultaneously denounce the DPP administration
and promote nuclear energy. As previously observed by Hsiao (1999,
p. 49), KMT-backed pro-nuclear advocates manipulated public ignorance
to instil a fear of energy shortages as well as the necessity of keeping
nuclear power plants online.
The problem of air pollution, however, provided the KMT a much
greater opportunity to renew its pro-nuclear stance. In March 2018,
Huang Shih-hsiu, who was the founder of a pro-nuclear group and
served as an adviser to former KMT chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu,
came up with a proposal to forestall the withdrawal of nuclear
energy, using the “green for nuclear” (yihe yanglü
promoting nuclear energy as a means of reducing air pollution from
coal-burning thermal plants. Huang spearheaded efforts to stop the
DPP’s plans to phase out nuclear energy by putting the matter to a
public vote in a referendum.
In the past, referenda on environmental matters were initiated by
local communities opposed to incinerator or waste storage, and by
the anti-nuclear movement with the support of the DPP (Hsiao 1999,
wake of Lin Yi-hsiung’s hunger strikes against NPP4 (supra, and Ho
could divert a referendum away from its initial goal of implementing
grassroots democracy (Ho 2006, pp. 340–43).
A December 2017 reform of the Referendum Act rendered it far
on the ballot for the November municipal elections. The end result
identity, and LGBT rights. Huang’s bid to ensure the maintenance of
nuclear energy made the list, as did two KMT initiatives to cut coal-
based energy production. The KMT also backed a proposal to stop the
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 56 9/4/21 3:11 PM
Environmental Movements in Taiwan’s Anthropocene 57
the Fukushima nuclear disaster, a diplomatic move planned by the Tsai
government to reinforce links with Japan.15 Anti-nuclear groups like the
GCAA were not opposed to the reform provided the food products
would be carefully checked by customs. But the KMT distorted the
problem as a lack of concern by the government for food safety and
the public health. Some gangsters with suspected KMT links even
disrupted a public hearing on the case.16
The very limited time between the approval of the referendum
with rational arguments, in particular on technical issues like energy
and air pollution.17 The presence of such hot-button topics as same-
referendum ultimately served as a wholesale denunciation of the
DPP and the Tsai government and contributed to the election of
KMT candidates. Among them were Han Kuo-yu in Kaohsiung (long
a DPP stronghold) and Lu Shiow-yen in Taichung, both of whom
made reducing air pollution a central campaign pledge. Yet obvious
contradictions persisted; Han claimed, for instance, that he would
clear the city of air pollution, while nevertheless maintaining heavy
industries, including thermal plants.
Although this section has focused on the KMT, the DPP and
other parties have also been guilty of manipulating environmental
issues for partisan gains. However, such instrumentalization is not
limited to national movements, like those against nuclear energy and
air pollution. The next section will examine these phenomena in the
cases of two local movements and how the environmental justice
movement in aboriginal lands has contributed to developing a civic
form of eco-nationalism.
Environmental Justice and Indigenous Nationalism
Aborigines make up a very small proportion of Taiwan’s population, but
their ancestral lands cover a large part of the east and central mountain
have been the most vulnerable to the rapacity of the state and big
corporations. They have seen their lands transformed into national parks
or into mining areas by cement companies, whereas they themselves are
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 57 9/4/21 3:11 PM
58 Paul Jobin
denied land use for building houses, hunting, and cutting down trees
(Chi 2001, 2015a, 2015b; C-T. Huang 2012; Lin 2003; Simon 2017). Of
the 217 mining areas in Taiwan, 80 per cent are located in aboriginal
territories.18 Thus, in addition to suffering from culturally destructive
assimilationist policies, Taiwan’s indigenous people have also paid a
heavy price for the rapid growth of post-war industrialization.
This disadvantaged state prompted the adoption in the mid-1990s
of the notion of environmental justice (Chi and Wang 1995; Chi 1997,
2001). Environmental justice was developed in the United States in the
1980s, in response to the racist and classist distribution of toxic hazards
and the heavy burden imposed on communities of black people. It
across all parts of society; in Taiwan, with regard to its indigenous
population, this clearly did not exist.
After her study on post-Chernobyl anti-nuclear movements, Jane
Dawson (2000) looked at other examples of eco-nationalism around the
world, including cases of subnationalism. She observed that indigenous
groups can gain more appeal, both domestically and globally, if they
frame their demands for social justice and the recognition of their
specific identity in terms of environmental justice. However, she
pessimistically concluded that the environmental component tended
to be limited to instrumental and tactical considerations, rather than
a lasting union with the cause of a national or subnational identity.
This observation works as a reminder to avoid the naive and
romantic views that weaken many studies on environmental justice
and indigenous rights. Yet, under certain conditions, the association
between environmental justice and indigenous (sub)nationalism might
well bring positive results.
A survey conducted in 1999 showed that a majority of Taiwanese
endorsed the principles of environmental justice and expressed
sympathy for aboriginal people (Chi and Hsiao 2003). For instance,
around two-thirds agreed that aborigines should be allowed to
hunt or build their homes in national parks and acknowledged that
consolation payments are not enough to compensate them for the
storage of nuclear waste.
This last issue, one of the most shocking cases of environmental
injustice and state racism, concerns the placement of a storage facility
for nuclear waste on Orchid Island (or Lanyu), the home of the Tao
(Yami) people. Kept purposely isolated during Japanese rule and much
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 58 9/4/21 3:11 PM
Environmental Movements in Taiwan’s Anthropocene 59
of the martial law period, the Tao have preserved their own language
and cultural practices. The government was therefore able to exploit
the language barrier to hide the purpose of the facility (it was widely
believed to be a canning factory). When martial law was lifted, the
site’s true nature was revealed and protests emerged (Hsiao 1999).
The Tao have continued their campaign against the facility ever since,
transforming their traditional beliefs and rituals into striking forms of
street protest (Chi 2001; Fan 2006; Jobin 2010; and my observation at
a protest in Taipei in March 2013).
Still, after thirty years and numerous projects for relocation, the
waste storage facility remains on Lanyu; the alternative site is another
tribal people’s township. Fan (2009) shows that, despite residents’ and
workers’ legitimate concern for their health, both the Taipower Company
and the government regard them as ignorant and “technophobic”.
Notwithstanding, President Tsai’s 2016 formal apology to the Tao for
discourse by the EPA itself, the basic rules of distributive and procedural
justice have continued to be ignored (C-L. G. Huang 2012; Huang et
al. 2013; Tu 2017b).
But the problems of environmental injustice cannot be detached
from a more fundamental issue, which has been the central claim of
Taiwan’s aboriginal communities since the late 1980s: the struggle for
the retrocession of their lands (huan wo tudi). While their battles have
gained appeal among the Han, their claim for acknowledgment of
KMT and DPP for partisan purposes (Friedman 2018). For although
indigenous groups account for only 2.2 per cent of Taiwan’s population,
they hold 5.3 per cent of the seats in the legislature (Simon 2017,
p. 249). However, there are important nuances between the parties.
The KMT has pursued its pork-barrel tactics to maintain domination,
paying little respect to the cultural values of indigenous people, or
at best as folklore for tourists. In contrast, the DPP and green-camp
Austronesian characteristics, as a way to reinforce Taiwanese identity
and break with the “Great China” imaginary (Sia 2014, 2016, 2018).
For the green camp, indigenous peoples therefore represent a symbol
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 59 9/4/21 3:11 PM
60 Paul Jobin
have developed the strongest relationships with aboriginal activists
tend to be pan-green or at least very critical of the KMT domination
mining operation sums up: “We have been used by both the KMT
and DPP, but at least when the government is ruled by the DPP, we
have more opportunities to discuss and express our views. We feel
more respected.”19
Simon (2017) found that despite indigenous communities’ keenness
storage, destructive mass tourism, and post-disaster reconstruction
(like after Typhoon Morakot in 2009, the deadliest so far; see also
movements, especially the environmental movements, which they
perceive as dominated by Taiwanese Buddhists and thus intrinsically
opposed to hunting” (p. 252). It used to be that a large majority of
indigenous activists were Presbyterians, which tended to alienate
members of other churches, such as Roman Catholic and the True
Jesus Church, which were also well implanted among aborigines. But
Simon (2017, pp. 245–47) has further observed a rise in non-church
actors during the last decade, such as the Indigenous Youth Front
(yuanzhu minzu qingnian zhenxian) and the Taiwan Indigenous People
Society (Taiwan yuanshe).
In the movement against Asia Cement (see Figure 2.6), these groups
they are Han, provided they build mutual trust in the long run.20 Like
the protest against nuclear waste storage on Lanyu, the mobilization
had scaled up from a local issue to a national symbol of environmental
injustice, with indigenous people at the forefront (Simon 2002; Lin
2010; Jobin 2018a, 2020).
As posited by Simon (2017, p. 253), “the indigenous movement
is not at all about the emergence of a Taiwanese Volk”, a national
identity distinct from China. Rather, mobilizations of indigenous people
represent a sort of subnationalism and their environmental efforts may
likewise be considered eco-(sub)nationalism. Although the indigenous
rights movement may have its own logic and momentum, cooperation
between aborigines and Han environmental activists has become an
essential component of Taiwan’s civic eco-nationalism.
This eco-(sub)nationalism is an emblematic expression of sometimes
desperate attempts to cope with the anxiety of the Anthropocene.
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 60 9/4/21 3:11 PM
Environmental Movements in Taiwan’s Anthropocene 61
Anthropologist Yi-Tze Lee observes that Taiwanese aborigines have
recently multiplied rituals of “returning to ancestral land” (fanhui
zujudi), which can be seen as a renewed form of the 1980s movement
for the retrocession of ancestral lands (huan wo tudi):
These actions reunite the bodily memories of the indigenous people
themselves, and connect the scales of traditional knowledge with its
narrate their relationships with landscapes retrace the steps of their
is enkindled in the Anthropocene (Lee 2020, p. 143).
Demonstration against Asia Cement in the shape of Taiwan, Taipei,
25 June 2017
Source: Cour tesy of Citizens of the Earth, Taiwan.
FIGURE 2.6
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 61 9/4/21 3:11 PM
62 Paul Jobin
Mobilizing Around Legal Action
important form of mobilization for environmental justice, one that
targets private companies that cause pollution, rather than lobbying
the government. During the last two decades, a growing number of
lies in the failure of Taiwan’s Public Nuisance Disputes Mediation Act
(gonghai jiufen chulifa, voted in 1992) to offer satisfying solutions to the
victims of industrial pollution (Ho and Su 2008; Shih and Tu 2017).
Another is that the compensation schemes or various “good neighbour
policies” (dunqin mulin), offered by big companies to buy the consent
of fence-line communities, do not always meet their goals (Wang and
Hsiao 2004; Jobin 2021). Going to court has thus been one of the few
options left to convey dissent and seek more righteous policies.
However, the average time for getting a judicial ruling is very
long. For farmers and residents of rural areas with few resources
or social capital, such litigation would be impossible without strong
support. Instrumental in this have been the Legal Aid Foundation
(LAF), launched in 2004 after a vote by the parliament, and non-
governmnetal organizations (NGOs) like the Environmental Jurists
Association (founded in 2010). Below are some examples.
In Tainan, the residents living near a petrochemical plant were
exposed to one of the worst concentrations of dioxins in the world.
The Taiwan Alkali plant, which produced a pesticide, was a colonial
legacy of the Japanese imperial army. The Tainan branch of LAF
offered to help the residents and some former workers sue the parent
company, the China Petroleum Development Company, and the state
for compensation (Jobin 2013). It took more than ten years for the
plaintiffs to obtain a fairly positive decision from the District Court
the Supreme Court (2018). The company and the state were ordered
to pay 160 million Taiwan dollars (around US$5.6 million) to 229
plaintiffs, a relatively small sum, however, when compared to similar
cases in the United States.
In August 2018, after twenty years of mobilization, the Taiwan
Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling in the case of Taiwan
RCA, an American company, which had produced television sets in
Taiwan from 1970 to 1992. After the plants were closed and production
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 62 9/4/21 3:11 PM
Environmental Movements in Taiwan’s Anthropocene 63
moved to China, the land and the ground water around the main plant
in Taoyuan were found to be highly polluted by organic solvents.
Former workers, most of whom were women, found themselves stricken
with all sorts of cancers and other health problems. In 2007, with
employer and its parent companies, U.S. conglomerate General Electric
and Thomson Consumer Electronics of France (today Technicolor SA).
The “corporate veil”, which protects a corporation from being liable
for its subsidiaries’ obligations, was a major obstacle for the plaintiffs’
lawyers (Jobin and Tseng 2014).
The main task was to prove causation between the toxicants the
workers had been exposed to, either at work or because they had drunk
the area’s contaminated ground water (H-H. Chen 2011). Thanks to
the striking testimony of the plaintiffs and their experts, in 2015, the
District Court judges recognized that the workers had been poisoned
and ruled against RCA and Technicolor (Y-P. Lin 2018). Two years
on the liability of General Electric, ruling that the defendants were
all fully responsible for negligently exposing the workers to a wide
range of thirty-one toxicants. This was a breakthrough given the one-
chemical-one-disease view of causation that usually dominates toxic
for half of the plaintiffs, and sent the case back to the High Court for
the other half; another group of 1,100 plaintiffs is also pending in the
has fuelled left-wing criticism, thereby framing Taiwan as a victim of
global capitalism, another aspect of Taiwan’s civic eco-nationalism.
Before the cases of Taiwan Alkali and RCA reached the Supreme
Court, their success in the lower courts served as encouragement
for fence-line residents of the Sixth Naphtha Cracker in central
Taiwan (supra) to sue the Formosa Plastics Corporation. The plaintiffs
suffer from cancers attributed to toxic air emissions from this huge
petrochemical zone. The case was initiated (in 2015, at the District
Court of Yunlin County) by Thomas Chan, an environmental lawyer
supra). As
the company accounts for around 10 per cent of Taiwan’s GDP, the
plaintiffs and their lawyers face an enormous disparity in resources
still going around in circles. They nevertheless receive support from a
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 63 9/4/21 3:11 PM
64 Paul Jobin
solid network of scholars and environmental activists, coordinated by
the Environmental Rights Foundation (ERF). The foundation was itself
established thanks to a lawsuit launched in 2010 by a humble group
of six farmers against the extension of the Central Taiwan Science
Park, one of the island’s three high tech parks.21 More recently, the
support group is closely cooperating with environmental activists in
Texas and Louisiana who successfully sued Formosa Plastics USA for
chronic water pollution and persistently breaking the law.
Lastly, Taiwan’s civic environmentalism is also about pressuring
ERF, the Environmental Jurists Association, and a Vietnamese priest in
Taiwan have coordinated an international network (composed mainly
of overseas Vietnamese and the Catholic Church in Vietnam) for a
mammoth collective lawsuit. In June 2019, a group of 7,875 Vietnamese
Plastics, China Steel, Japanese steel maker JFE, and their joint subsidiary
executives and eighteen other related companies including offshore
concerns (C-N. Lin 2019; Jobin and Ying 2020). See Figure 2.7.
The plaintiffs seek justice for the marine pollution that occurred
in Central Vietnam in April 2016, causing tremendous environmental
damage and threatening the livelihoods of the region’s inhabitants
(see Ortmann, chapter 9). The case is being heard in Taiwan because
the plaintiffs do not trust in the independence of Vietnamese courts
and fear state repression. In addition, the one-party rule in Vietnam
presents serious constraints for more traditional forms of protest and
lobbying. Taiwan, however, boasts the encouraging precedents set by
RCA and other class actions. It will probably be a legal and technical
nightmare for the judges and lawyers, but this movement is another
sign of the dynamism of Taiwan’s civil society.
In addition to professors, journalists, and grassroots activists, lawyers
have become essential actors in environmental movements in many
countries. The modern Taiwanese legal system was developed out of
the legislative framework established by the 1947 Republic of China
and Japanese jurisprudence, as well as the American judicial system.
This legal framework explains why Taiwan’s collective lawsuits (tuanti
susong) often refer to Japanese anti-pollution litigation, which began
at the end of the 1960s (Jobin 2013). In Japan, these lawsuits are
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 64 9/4/21 3:11 PM
Environmental Movements in Taiwan’s Anthropocene 65
Press conference in front of Formosa Plastics’ annual shareholders’ meeting
in Taipei, on the day the lawsuit was launched at the Taipei District Court,
11 June 2019
Source: Cour tesy of Environmental Jurists Association, Taiwan.
FIGURE 2.7
an essential part of the environmental movement, or what Japanese
lawyers call a “lawsuit movement” ( ). In addition, despite
differences between continental and common law, the country’s strong
links with the United States have made the American model of class
other hand, to Chinese cases, despite the development of environmental
litigation in China and their shared use of Mandarin Chinese (Stern
2013). An obvious reason for this is the perception that Chinese courts
lack independence and make arbitrary use of the law for political
repression. In contrast, notwithstanding the lengthy process of Taiwanese
courts, environmental groups engaged in these lawsuits show a good
deal of trust in the independence of the courts and in Taiwan’s rule
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 65 9/4/21 3:11 PM
66 Paul Jobin
of national identity, it is an essential component of Taiwan’s civic
environmentalism.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I aimed to highlight the main achievements of Taiwan’s
environmental movements in the last two decades, focusing on how
ecological issues are entangled with national politics. As the fault
line of Taiwanese politics lies not so much on a traditional left-right
divide, but on differing positions toward China, it is not surprising
that, for countrywide issues like nuclear energy and air pollution,
China is a major factor (as, for instance, during the 2009 march for
referenda against NPP4 and trade with China), or that environmental
activists take an active role in mobilizations for the sake of Taiwan
this phenomenon as an expression of eco-nationalism. Other examples
include the controversy against Greenpeace, demonstrations in the
shape of Taiwan, or on a more modest scale, environmental protection
tours around the island.
Although environmental groups have gained more partisan
independence compared to the 1990s, links between ecologists have
remained stronger with the green camp than the blue (this is most
obvious when activists look for support among lawmakers). However,
by capitalizing on nationwide concern about air pollution and local
opposition to coal-burning thermal plants. A few months after the
elections, it was already clear that air pollution was no longer a
matter of concern for the newly elected KMT mayors. I therefore
call for a distinction between the crude opportunism of politicians
of any party who are only motivated by temporary electoral targets,
and environmental groups in search of windows of opportunity for
civic eco-nationalism.
But the description of this civic eco-nationalism would be incomplete
without two other components, substantially more important. Both
deal with environmental justice. First are the movements of indigenous
peoples for the recognition of their land rights and their distinct
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 66 9/4/21 3:11 PM
Environmental Movements in Taiwan’s Anthropocene 67
subnational identities. Second are the class actions for the victims of
industrial hazards, such as the fence-line communities of farmers in
southern and central Taiwan, former RCA electronics workers, and
economic and symbolic capital.
Environmental protection (huanbao) has therefore nurtured a spirit
of protecting the homeland, for the sake of Taiwan as a certain type
of nation: democratic and multicultural. As seen recently in Western
Europe, eco-nationalism may turn into a reinforcement of xenophobic or
egoistical attitudes, but so far, I have seen no such example in Taiwan.
Most of its eco-nationalism is composed of a left-wing liberal criticism,
open to the world. A good example of this eco-criticism (Chang and
Slovic 2016) can be found in the TV broadcast “Our Island”. This
and detailed report on the marine disaster in Vietnam.
What general assessment can we then make of Taiwan’s civic eco-
nationalism? If we look only at Taiwan’s carbon footprint, the result
from its petrochemical “heavy smokers”, it remains to be seen what
contribution Taiwan can provide on dramatic and urgent issues like
coral destruction in the South China Sea, or the massive deforestation
in Southeast Asia. One might therefore think that authoritarian China
But at best, as Shahar (2015) aptly notes, eco-authoritarianism is only
capable of matching the performance of market liberalism, and at
the clear cost of renouncing individual and political rights. Dryzek
and Pickering (2019, p. 149) further argue that democracy must be
redeemed in the Anthropocene, because only it allows the ecological
authoritarianism prescribes the solutions through top-down directives
with uncertain results. Today’s environmental problems are exceedingly
daunting, and response to them too long delayed, but civic eco-
nationalism at least reconciles the global concern for the climate with
a no less legitimate concern: the protection of democracies and national
sovereignties against authoritarianism and neo-imperialism.
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 67 9/4/21 3:12 PM
68 Paul Jobin
best meet the demands of the age. Moreover, though it has a long way
to go to turn the tide, the dynamism of its environmental movement,
in embracing the democratic spirit, has an opportunity to prove it.
NOTES
* Thanks are due to Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, Ming-sho Ho, Wenling Tu,
and two anonymous reviewers for judicious remarks to improve drafts of this
chapter, as well as my research assistants Chee-Wei Ying, Fei-hsin Chang, Shih-
hao Jheng, and Yi-ying Tsai for their help in collecting elements of analysis,
transcription of interviews, etc.
1. As of January 2019, Taiwan EPA has listed a total of 323 environmental
organizations. One of the most active groups on climate change policy is
the Taiwan Youth Climate Coalition (Ta i w an q i n g ni a n q i ho u b i a n qi a n l i an m e n g),
with 15,000 followers as of July 2019.
2. According to the Germanwatch Institute’s Climate Risk Index, in 2017,
Taiwan ranked 7th.
3. According to the Germanwatch Institute’s Climate Change Performance
Index, in 2018, Taiwan ranked 54th, down from 32nd in 2009. See also
Pan (2017) and Chapter 11 of this book.
4. Examples include the Freedom House (Washington), The Economist
Intelligence Unit (London) and the V-Dem Institute (University of
Gothenburg, Sweden), all available online. See also Chapter 11 of this
book.
when a PhD classmate invited me to visit some former workers of the
RCA electronics factories, who were stricken with cancer. From 2008 until
today, I have regularly participated in the class action of these workers
and, since 2016, in another class action launched by fence line residents
against Formosa Plastics in Yunlin, as well as by the victims of Formosa
movement (in particular from 2011 to 2014), following on from interviews
conducted in 2002 with nuclear plant workers; a class action on a case
of dioxin pollution in Tainan (from 2008 to 2013); another class action on
asbestos pollution; and, since 2016, the movement against air pollution,
started a research project on the case of Asia Cement.
6. For a discussion of civic and ethnic nationalism in the context of Taiwan,
see Muyard (2012), pp. 341–48. See also Hsiau and Wang (2016).
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 68 9/4/21 3:12 PM
Environmental Movements in Taiwan’s Anthropocene 69
7. As Ke explains, under martial law, except for a few beaches allowed for
bathing, ordinary people could not access the seaside in an effort to prevent
Taiwanese from leaving for China. Our interviews of Ke Chin-yuan, Yu
Li-ping, and Chang Dabbie Dai-ping, 29 December 2017 and 15 January
8. The flag was designed around 1985, by which time the anti-nuclear
movement and anti-pollution protests were on the rise, but it is unclear
hsiung, a Christian architect (Ch’iu 2016).
9. Informal discussions with GCAA members in July 2014, and additional
testimony from movement insiders on the important role played by GCAA
and Citizens of the Earth Taiwan, congruent with Grano (2015), Chuang
(2018) and Ho (2018, 2019).
10. An example of the heavy price that Lin has paid for his political commitment:
on 28 February 1980, while he was in prison, his mother and his young
daughters were stabbed to death, probably as an act of intimidation against
him and other pro-democracy activists.
11. The maps released by Taiwan EPA’s website use different colours to
symbolize the changing levels of air pollution, from green when safe
to yellow, orange, red, violet and purple for levels with risk for public
health. A “purple explosion” (zibao) has become a common way to raise
the alarm on social media. Since 2012, Taiwan EPA’s Pollutant Standard
Index (PSI) has released measurements of PM10, ozone 3, sulphur and
nitrogen dioxide, and carbon monoxide. In 2016, PM2.5 were added to
the measurement and the PSI was renamed Air Quality Index, as in the
United States (Jheng 2019, p. 59).
12. Field research in Yunlin from March 2016 onward.
13. Courtesy of the survey’s principal investigator, Yang Wen-shan (Research
Fellow, Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica). The survey, which was
conducted by the Center for Survey Research, Academia Sinica, as part
of the Taiwan Social Change Survey, has not yet been made public.
14. Cheng Ling-Jyh, a researcher from Academia Sinica has developed a light
low price with the help of Taiwanese electronics makers, for a current
network of around 7,000 users (Jheng 2019). On Facebook, another network
named PM2.5 Ziqiuhui: zixun ying gongkai, jujue zang kongqi [PM2.5 Self-
help Association: information should be made public, rejecting dirty air]
has gathered 24,000 followers as of July 2019. See also Air Clean Taiwan
(www.airclean.tw).
Affairs, Taipei, June 2018.
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 69 9/4/21 3:12 PM
70 Paul Jobin
16. Testimony from two attendants at the public hearing on November 2017.
See also Ho (2018), pp. 461–62.
17. Interview with one environmental activist (in her thirties, with seven years’
experience in the movement), Taipei, 18 December 2018.
18. These data were presented by New Power Party’s lawmaker Kawlo Lyun,
during a press conference on 4 April 2018 (source: Citizens of the Earth,
Taiwan).
19. Interview in Sincheng Township (Hualien County), 14 January 2019.
20. For instance, in the case of Taiwan Citizens of the Earth, Taiwan, Hualien-
based Huang Jing-ting (alias Hsiao-nan) has been fully integrated into a
group of young Truku, while Taipei-based Tsai Chong-yue is a member
of a national association called Taiwan yuanzhumin zhengce xiehui.
21. See Tu (2007), Chiu (2014), and the foundation’s website: www.erf.org.tw.
REFERENCES
Arrigo, Linda Gail. 1994. “The Environmental Nightmare of the Economic
Miracle: Land Abuse and Land Struggles in Taiwan”. Bulletin of Concerned
Asian Scholars 26, no. 1–2: 2–44.
Arrigo, Linda Gail and Gaia Puleston. 2006. “The Environmental Movement in
Taiwan after 2000: Advances and Dilemmas”. In What Has Changed? Taiwan
Before and After the Change in Ruling Parties, edited by Dafydd Fell, Henning
Kloter, and Chang Bi-Yu. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, pp. 165–84.
Beeson, Mark. 2010. “The Coming of Environmental Authoritarianism”.
Environmental Politics 19, no. 2: 276–94.
. 2016. “Environmental Authoritarianism in China”. In The Oxford Handbook
of Environmental Political Theory, edited by Teena Gabrielson, Cheryl Hall,
John M. Meyer, and David Schlosberg. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
pp. 520–32.
Biehl, Janet and Peter Staudenmaier. 1995. Ecofascism Revisited: Lessons from the
German Experience. Porsgrunn, Norway: New Compass.
Biehl, Janet, et al. 2011. Ecofascism Revisited: Lessons from the German Experience.
Porsgrunn, Norway: New Compass Press.
Calhoun, Craig. 2007. Nations Matter: Culture, History and the Cosmopolitan
Dream. London: Routledge.
Chang, Chia-ju and Scott Slovic, eds. 2016. Ecocriticism in Taiwan: Identity,
Environment, and the Arts. Washington, D.C.: Lexington Books.
Chen, Dung-sheng. 2011. “Taiwan’s Antinuclear Movement in the Wake of the
Fukushima Disaster, Viewed from an STS Perspective”. East Asian Science,
Technology and Society: An International Journal 5: 567–72.
Chen, Hsin-hsin. 2011. “Field Report: Professionals, Students, and Activists in
Taiwan Mobilize for an Unprecedented Collective-Action Lawsuit against a
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 70 9/4/21 3:12 PM
Environmental Movements in Taiwan’s Anthropocene 71
Former Top American Electronics Company”. East Asian Science, Technology
and Society: An International Journal 5: 555–65.
Chen, Yi-an and Ho Ming-sho. 2017. “Taiwan fan kongwu yundong 2.0”
2.0 [The movement against air pollution 2.0]. In Neng zenme
zhuan: qidong Taiwan nengyuan zhuanxing yaoshi
[How to turn? Keys for starting energy transition in Taiwan], edited
by Chou Kuei-tien and Kuo-hui Chang. Taipei: RSPRC/Liwen.
huanjing zhengyi de shehui jichu” [The social
foundation of environmental justice in Taiwan]. National Policy Quarterly
2, no. 3: 169–80.
Chi, Chun-jie. 1997. “Huanjing zhengyi: huanjing shehuixue de guifanxing
guanhuai” [Environmental justice: A
normative concern in environmental sociology]. In Huanjing jiazhiguan
yu huanjing jiaoyu xueshu yantaohui lunwenji
[Proceedings of the conference on environmental values and
education]. Tainan: National Cheng Kung University Centre for Taiwan
Culture Studies.
. 2001. “Capitalist Expansion and Indigenous Land Rights”. The Asia
2, no. 2: 135–53.
. 2004. “From Environmental Injustice to Ethnic Reconciliation Taroko
People and Taroko National Park in Taiwan”. Tamkang Review 34, no. 3/4:
53–68.
. 2015a. “Yilan xian: Taiwan de lüse dianfan”
[Yilan county: a green model for Taiwan]. In Taiwan difang huanjing de
jiaoxun: wudou sixian de dadaizhi
and four counties], edited by Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao. New Taipei City:
Juliu , pp. 293–332.
guangguang fazhan” [Hualien
county: from the capture of resources and industrial big dream to the
development of tourism]. In Taiwan difang huanjing de jiaoxun: wudou sixian
de dadaizhi [Lessons from Taiwan
by Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao. New Taipei City: Juliu , pp. 333–60.
Chi, Chun-jie and Shun-shiu Wang. 1995. “Huanjing zhengyi: yuanzhumin
yu guojia gongyuan chongtu de fenxi”
people and national parks]. In Taiwan de shehuixue yanjiu: huigu yu zhanwang
lunwenji [Sociology research in Taiwan:
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 71 9/4/21 3:12 PM
72 Paul Jobin
proceedings of retrospect and prospect], edited by Song-ling Lin and Jenn-
Hwan Wang. Taichung: Tunghai University.
Chiu, Hua-mei. 2011. “The Dark Side of Silicon Island: High-Tech Pollution
and the Environmental Movement in Taiwan”. Capitalism, Nature and
Socialism 22, no. 1: 40–57.
. 2014. “The Movement against Science Park Expansion and Electronics
Hazards in Taiwan: A Review from an Environmental Justice Perspective”.
China Perspectives 3: 15–22.
[Ou Hsiu-Hsiung, the man who designed the
Taiwan People News, 9 September 2016.
Chou, Kuei-tien. 2015. “From Anti-Pollution to Climate Change Risk Movement:
Reshaping Civic Epistemology”. Sustainability 7, no. 11: 14574–96.
. 2017. Qihou bianqian shehuixue: gaotan shehui ji qi zhuanxing tiaozhan
[Sociology of climate change: high
carbon society and its transformation challenge]. Taipei: National Taiwan
University Press.
Chou, Kuei-tien et al. 2019. Richang shenghuo de nengyuan geming
[Energy revolution in daily life: eight pioneers of energy transition
in Taiwan]. Taipei: Springhill & RSPRC.
Chuang, Chun-mei. 2020. “Renleishi zhong de nuxing zhuyi: lizudian, difang
yu shijian” [Feminism in the
anthropocene: standpoints, places and practices]. Chung-Wai Literary
49, no. 1: 13–60.
Chuang, Chun-mei and Jow-jiun Gong, eds. 2020. “Yishu celiang, renleishi
meixue pipan” [Artistic measuring, aesthetic
ACT: Art Critique of Taiwan 80:
4–128.
Chuang, Ya-chung. 2013. Democracy on Trial: Social Movements and Cultural
Politics in Postauthoritarian Taiwan. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press.
. 2018. “Democracy under Siege: Xiangming
Boundary 2 45, no. 3: 61–77.
Dawson, Jane. 1995. “Anti-Nuclear Activism in the USSR and its Successor
States: A Surrogate for Nationalism?” Environmental Politics 4, no. 3: 441–66.
. 1996. Eco-Nationalism: Anti-Nuclear Activism and National Identity in
Russia, Lithuania, and Ukraine. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
. 2000. “The Two Faces of Environmental Justice: Lessons from the Eco-
Nationalist Phenomenon”. Environmental Politics 9, no. 2: 22–60.
DeWitt, John. 1994. Civic Environmentalism: Alternatives to Regulation in States
and Communities. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press.
Dryzek, John S. and Jonathan Pickering. 2019. The Politics of the Anthropocene.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 72 9/4/21 3:12 PM
Environmental Movements in Taiwan’s Anthropocene 73
Taiwan”. Environmental Politics 15, no. 3: 417–34.
. 2009. “Public Perceptions and the Nuclear Waste Repository on Orchid
Island, Taiwan”. Public Understanding of Science 18: 167–76.
Fan, Mei-fang and Kuei-tien Chou. 2017. “Environmental Justice in a Transitional
and Transboundary Context in East Asia”. In Handbook of Environmental
Justice
Abingdon: Routledge.
Fan, Yun. 2019. Social Movements in Taiwan’s Democratic Transition: Linking
Activists to the Changing Political Environment. London: Routledge.
Fell, Dafydd and Peng Yen-wen. 2017. “The Revival of Taiwan’s Green Party
after 2008”. In Taiwan’s Social Movements under Ma Ying-jeou: From the Wild
, edited by Dafydd Fell. London: Routledge.
Friedman, Kerim P. 2018. “The Hegemony of the Local: Taiwanese
Multiculturalism and Indigenous Politics”. Boundary 2 45, no. 3: 79–105.
Grano, Simona. 2015. Environmental Governance in Taiwan: A New Generation of
Activists and Stakeholders. London: Routledge.
. 2017. “The Evolution of the Anti-Nuclear Movement in Taiwan since
2008”. In Taiwan’s Social Movements under Ma Ying-jeou: From the Wild
, edited by Dafydd Fell. London: Routledge.
Hager, Carol and Mary Alice Haddad, eds. 2015. Nimby is Beautiful: Cases of Local
Activism and Environmental Innovation around the World. Oxford: Berghahn.
Ho, Hsin-jie. 2017. “Lüse heping zhengyi zhihou: sanzhong ditu liangan
[After the greenpeace dispute: three kinds of map, a
red line between two straits and one planet]. Theinitium.com, 13 July 2017.
Ho, Ming-sho. 2003. “The Politics of Anti-Nuclear Protest in Taiwan: A Case
of Party-Dependent Movement (1980–2000)”. Modern Asian Studies 37, no.
3: 683–708.
. 2005a. “Weakened State and Social Movement: The Paradox of Taiwanese
Environmental Politics after the Power Transfer”. Journal of Contemporary
China 14: 339–52.
. 2005b. “Protest as Community Revival: Folk Religion in a Taiwanese
Anti-Pollution Movement”. African and Asian Studies 4, no. 3: 237–69.
. 2006. Lüse minzhu: Taiwan huanjing yundong de yanjiu
[Green democracy: a study on Taiwan’s environmental
movement]. Taipei: Socio Publishing.
. 2010. “Co-Opting Social Ties: How the Taiwanese Petrochemical Industry
Neutralized Environmental Opposition”. Mobilization: An International Journal
15, no. 4: 447–63.
. 2014a. “The Fukushima Effect: Explaining the Recent Resurgence of the
Anti-Nuclear Movement in Taiwan”. Environmental Politics 23, no. 6: 965–83.
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 73 9/4/21 3:12 PM
74 Paul Jobin
. 2014b. “Resisting Naphtha Crackers: A Historical Survey of
Environmental Politics in Taiwan”. China Perspectives 3, no. 3: 5–14.
. 2016. “Making an Opportunity: Strategic Bipartisanship in Taiwan’s
Environmental Movement”. Sociological Perspectives 59, no. 3: 543–60.
. 2018. “The Historical Breakthroughs of Taiwan’s Anti-Nuclear Movement:
The Making of a Militant Citizen Movement”. Journal of Contemporary Asia
48, no. 3: 445–64.
. 2019.
in Taiwan and the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. Pennsylvania: Temple
University Press.
Ho, Ming-sho and Su Feng-san. 2008. “Control by Containment: Politics of
Institutionalizing Pollution Disputes in Taiwan”. Environment and Planning
(A) 40, no. 10: 2402–18.
Hsiao, Hsin-Huang Michael. 1987. Women zhi you yige Taiwan: fanwuran, shengtai
baoyu yu huanjing yundong
[We have only one Taiwan: anti-pollution, ecological protection, and
environmental movements]. Taipei: Booklife .
. 1988. Qishi niandai fanwuran zili jiuji de jiegou yu guocheng fenxi yu
guocheng fenxi [Structure and
process analysis of anti-pollution self-help associations in the 1980s].
Taipei: EPA.
. 1999. “Environmental Movements in Taiwan”. In Asia’s Environmental
Movements: Comparative Perspectives, edited by Yok-shiu F. Lee and Alvin
Y. So. Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, pp. 31–54.
, ed. 2003. Sustainable Development for Island Societies: Taiwan and the
World
National Central University.
. 2017. “Forty Years of Environmental Movements in Taiwan: Main
Streams and New Trends to Enhance”. Paper presented at the Conference
on Taiwan Environmental Protection Movement: Review and Prospect,
National Taiwan University, 21 October 2017.
. 2019. “Observations on Rising Populism in Taiwan Politics”. Global
Taiwan Brief 4, no. 15 (31 July 2019). http://globaltaiwan.org.
Hsiao, Hsin-Huang Michael and Hua-pi Tseng. 1999. “The Formation of
Environmental Consciousness in Taiwan: Intellectuals, Media, and the
Public Mind”. Asian Geographer 18, no. 1–2: 99–109.
Hsiao, Hsin-Huang Michael and Hwa-jen Liu. 2002. “Local Practice of Violence
in Environmental Protests in Taiwan since the 1980s”. Ritsumeikan Journal
9: 45–57.
Hsiao, Hsin-Huang Michael, Russell Stone, and Chun-chieh Chi. 2002. “Taiwan
Environmental Consciousness: Indicators of Collective Mind toward
Sustainable Development”. Sustainable Development 4, no. 2: 1–33.
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 74 9/4/21 3:12 PM
Environmental Movements in Taiwan’s Anthropocene 75
Hsiau, A-chin and Horng-luen Wang, eds. 2016. Zhuqun, minzhu yu xiandai
guojia – jingyan yu lilun de fansi
[Ethnicity, nation, and the modern state: rethinking theory and experience
in Taiwan and China]. Taipei: Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica.
Hsu, Keng-ming, Chun-chieh Chi, and Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao. 2016. “Qihou
[Climate change, intergenerational
justice and sustainability: concept, indicators and policy]. Taiwan Economics
Forecast and Policy 46, no. 2: 259–85.
Hsu, Shih-jung and Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao. 2006. “Wurang changzhi
zailiyong zhengce zhi yanjiu: Meiguo yu Taiwan zhi bijiao”
[Comparative study on the reutilization
policy for contaminated sites: US and Taiwan cases]. City and Planning
33, no. 2: 143–67.
Huang, Chao-yung. 2019. “Congbu huandao 57 tian…Lese haitan tang heishui”
57 [Walking around the island in 57 days…
United
Daily News, 22 April 2019.
Huang, Chi-lun Gillan. 2012. “Environmental Justice and Public Participation:
A Case of Nuclear Waste Management and Policy in Taiwan”. PhD
dissertation, University of Newcastle.
Huang, Chi-lun Gillan, Tim Gray, and Derek Bell. 2013. “Environmental Justice
of Nuclear Waste Policy in Taiwan: Taipower, Government, and Local
Community”. Environ Dev Sustain 15: 1555–71.
Huang, Chih-tung. 2012. “One Park, Two EJs: When Two Environmental
Justices Collide Head-on in Taiwanese National Parks”. Environmental
Justice 5, no. 6: 298–305.
Huang, Chih-tung and Ruey-chyi Hwang. 2009. “‘Environmental Justices’: What
We Have Learned from the Taiwanese Environmental Justice Controversy”.
Environmental Justice 2, no. 3: 101–7.
machines that bring citizens together: airboxes]. In Richang shenghuo de
nengyuan geming [Energy revolution in daily life],
edited by Chou Kuei-tien et al. Taipei: Springhill & RSPRC, pp. 76–93.
Jobin, Paul. 2010. “Hazards and Protest in the ‘Green Silicon Island’: The
Struggle for Visibility of Industrial Hazards in Contemporary Taiwan”.
China Perspectives 83, no. 3: 46–62.
. 2013. “Beyond Uncertainty: Industrial Hazards and Class Actions in
Taiwan & Japan”. In Environmental History in East Asia: Interdisciplinary
Perspectives, edited by Ts’ui-jung Liu. London & New York: Routledge,
pp. 339–82.
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 75 9/4/21 3:12 PM
76 Paul Jobin
Monde Chinois Nouvelle Asie 56, no. 4: 120–35.
. 2018b. “Air Pollution in Taiwan: Self-determination or China Factor?”
Paper presented at the 15th Annual Conference of the European Association
of Taiwan Studies (EATS), University of Zurich, 4–6 April 2018b.
. 2020. “Extractivism in the Critical Zone”. In Critical Zones: The Science
and Politics of Landing on Earth, edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 80–83.
. 2021. “Our ‘Good Neighbor’ Formosa Plastics: Petrochemical Damage(s)
and the Meanings of Money”. Environmental Sociology 7, no. 1: 40–53.
de ‘nanxiang’?” ? [Formosa Plastics
goes to Vietnam to make steel: a ‘southbound turn’ for pollution export?].
In Nanfang shehuixue jiaokeshu [A manuel for southern
sociology], edited by Chao En-jie. Taipei: Rive gauche .
Jobin, Paul, Chee Wei Ying, and Gordon Shih-hao Jheng. 2017. “Formosa and
the Geopolitics of Industrial Hazards”. Paper presented at 6th International
Symposium on Environmental Sociology in East Asia, Taipei, 20–21 October
2017.
Jobin, Paul, Hsin-hsing Chen, and Yi-ping Lin. 2018. “Translating Toxic Exposure:
Taiwan RCA”. Toxic News, 1 February 2018. https://toxicnews.org.
Jobin, Paul and Yu-hwei Tseng. 2014. “Guinea Pigs Go to Court: Epidemiology
and Class Actions in Taiwan”. In Powerless Science? Science and Politics in
a Toxic World, edited by Soraya Boudia and Nathalie Jas. Oxford, New
York: Berghahn, pp. 170–91.
Ke, Chin-yuan. 2018. Women de dao: Taiwan sanshinian huanjing bianqian quanjilu
[Our island: complete records of thirty
years of environmental change in Taiwan]. New Taipei City: Acropolis.
Kenny, Paul. 2017. Populism and Patronage: Why Populists Win Elections in India,
Asia, and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Latour, Bruno. 2014. “Some Advantages of the Notion of ‘Critical Zone’ for
Geopolitics”. Procedia Earth and Planetary Science 10: 3–6.
Lee, Yi-tze. 2020. “Renlei shixia de yuanzhumin: dijing xushi yu jichu jianshe
renshilun” [Indigenous
people in the anthropocene: landscape narratives and epistemology of
infrastructure]. Chung-Wai Literary 49, no. 1: 133–43.
politisation de la jeunesse taïwanaise”. Monde Chinois Nouvelle Asie 56,
no. 4: 108–18.
Lii, Ding-tzann and Wen-yuan Lin. 2000. “Shehuili de wenhua genyuan: Lun
[The cultural origins of social
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 76 9/4/21 3:12 PM
Environmental Movements in Taiwan’s Anthropocene 77
forces: the historical formation of environmental rights in Taiwan, 1970–86].
Taiwan shehui yanjiu qikan 38: 133–206.
Lin, Chia-nan. 2019. “Thousands of Vietnamese Sue Investors of FPG Unit”.
Taipei Times, 12 June 2019.
Lin, Ch’ien-wei. 2019. “Huanbao Mazu ganjing Taiwan: Huandao jingtan”
[Environmental protector [Goddess] Mazu
cleans Taiwan: touring the island to purify the seashore]. Taiwan News
Review, 1 June 2019.
Lin, Ching-hsiu. 2010. “Women and Land: Privatisation, Gender Relations and
Social Change in Truku Society, Taiwan”. PhD thesis, Department of Social
Anthropology, University of Edinburgh.
[Preserve half the surface of the earth to nature:
the aesthetic experience]. Applied Ethics Review 64: 217–37.
Lin, Thung-hong et al. 2011. Bengshidai: Caituanhua pinqionghua yu shaozinühua
de weiji [The collapsing generation:
the crises of corporate domination, pauperization and low fertility rate].
Taipei: Taiwan Labor Front.
Lin, Yih-ren. 2003. “Yuanzhumin shoulie wenhua yu dongwu jiefang yundong
keneng jiemeng ma? Yige tudi lunli xue de guandian”
[Can indigenous hunting
culture and animal liberation movement be allied? a viewpoint from land
ethic]. Chung Wai Literary 32, no. 2: 73–102.
Lin, Yiping. 2018. “Reconstructing Genba: RCA Groundwater Pollution, Research
and Lawsuit in Taiwan, 1970–2014”. Positions: Asia Critique 26, no. 2: 305–41.
Liu, Hwa-jen. 2015. Leverage of the Weak: Labor and Environmental Movements in
Taiwan and South Korea. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
gushi” [Solving our air
problem by ourselves: the anti-air pollution stories of Chiayi City and
Puli Township]. In Richang shenghuo de nengyuan geming
[Energy revolution in daily life], edited by Chou Kuei-tien et al. Taipei:
Springhill & RSPRC, pp. 53–75.
[Land, community, and faith: an analytical
model of folk environmental discourse]. Taiwanese Journal for Studies of
Science, Technology and Medicine 22: 6–108.
McAdam, Doug and Hilary Schaffer Boudet. 2012. Putting Social Movements
in Their Right Place: Explaining Opposition to Energy Projects in the United
States, 2000–2005. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McAdam, Doug, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald, eds. 1996. Comparative
Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures
and Cultural Framings. New York: Cambridge University Press.
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 77 9/4/21 3:12 PM
78 Paul Jobin
Muyard, Frank. 2012. “The Formation of Taiwan’s New National Identity
Since the End of the 1980s”. In Taiwan Since Martial Law, edited by David
Blundell. Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, pp. 297–366.
. 2018. “The Role of Democracy in the Rise of the Taiwanese National
Identity”. In A New Era in Democratic Taiwan, edited by Jonathan Sullivan
and Chun-Yi Lee. London: Routledge, pp. 35–62.
Pan, Jason. 2017. “Government Urged to Act on Environment”. Taipei Times,
23 November 2017.
Shahar, Dan Coby. 2015. “Rejecting Eco-Authoritarianism, Again”. Environmental
Values 24, no. 3: 345–66.
Shih, Chia-liang and Wenling Tu. 2017. “Huanjing guanzhi xinzheng de kexue
xi lun”
no. 6 naphtha cracking]. Journal of Public Administration 52:
81–111.
Sia, Ek-hong Ljavakaw. 2014. “When Weak Communities Meet Strong NGOs:
Collaborative Governances in the Post-Disaster Reconstruction”. Paper
presented at the 11th Annual Conference of the European Association
of Taiwan Studies (EATS), University of Portsmouth, UK, 30 April–2 May
2014.
. 2016. “Crafting the Taiwanese Nation: Exclusivist and Inclusivist Theses
of the Postwar Taiwanese Nationalism”. Berliner China-Hefte – Chinese
History and Society 47: 56–84.
. 2018. “Crafting Aboriginal Nations in Taiwan: The Presbyterian Church
and the Imagination of the Aboriginal National Subject”. Asian Studies
Review 42, no. 2: 356–75.
Simon, Scott. 2002. “The Underside of a Miracle: Industrialization, Land, and
Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples”. Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine, June
2002 (online).
. 2005. “Scarred Landscapes and Tattooed Faces: Poverty, Identity and
Land Conflict in a Taiwanese Indigenous Community”. In Indigenous
Peoples and Poverty: An International Perspective, edited by Robyn Eversole,
John-Andrew McNeish, and Alberto D. Cimadamor. London: Zed Books,
pp. 53–68.
. 2017. “All Our Relations: Indigenous Rights Movements in Contemporary
Taiwan”. In Taiwan’s Social Movements under Ma Ying-jeou: From the Wild
, edited by Dafydd Fell. London: Routledge,
pp. 236–59.
Stephens, Piers H.G. 2001. “Blood, Not Soil: Anna Bramwell and the Myth
of ‘Hitler’s Green Party’”. Organization & Environment 14, no. 2: 173–87.
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 78 9/4/21 3:12 PM
Environmental Movements in Taiwan’s Anthropocene 79
Stern, Rachel. 2013. Environmental Litigation in China: A Study of Political
Ambivalence. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Tang, Ching-ping. 2003. “Democratizing Urban Politics and Civic Environ-
mentalism in Taiwan”. The China Quarterly 176: 1029–51.
Tang, Ching-ping, Shui-yang Tang, and Chung-yuan Chiu. 2011. “Inclusion,
Identity, and Environmental Justice in New Democracies: The Politics of
Pollution Remediation in Taiwan”. Comparative Politics 43, no. 3: 333–50.
Tilly, Charles and Sidney Tarrow. 2015. Contentious Politics, 2nd ed. New York:
Paradigm.
Tu, Wenling. 2007. “IT Industrial Development in Taiwan and the Constraints
on Environmental Mobilization”. Development and Change 38, no. 3: 505–27.
. 2015. Huanjing fengxiang yu gonggong zhili: tansuo Taiwan huanjing
minzhu shijian zhi dao
[Environmental risks and public governance: exploring practical way of
Taiwan environmental democracy]. Taipei: Wunan Books.
. 2017a. “An Uphill Battle to Hold High-Tech Corporations Accountable:
Lessons Learned from the Siaoli River Disputes in Taiwan”. Toxic News,
7 August 2017a. https://toxicnews.org.
. 2017b. “Social Dialogue for Environmental Justice: Civil Forums on
Nuclear Waste in Taiwan”. Paper presented at the Environmental Justice
Conference: Looking Back, Looking Forward, Sydney University.
. 2019. “Combating Air Pollution through Data Generation and
Reinterpretation: Community Air Monitoring in Taiwan”. East Asian Science,
Technology and Society: An International Journal 13: 235–55.
Tu, Wenling and Yujung Lee. 2009. “Ineffective Environmental Laws in
Regulating Electronic Manufacturing Pollution: Examining Water Pollution
Disputes in Taiwan”. In 2009 IEEE International Symposium on Sustainable
Systems and Technology, pp. 1–6.
Wang, Ting-jieh. 2012. “Communicating Environmental Protests: The National
Rescue Chilan Cypress Forests Campaign in Taiwan”. Environmental Politics
21, no. 1: 70–87.
Wang, Yiwen and Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao. 2004. “Huanjing zhengyixing
gonggong sheshi de huikui zhidu: dui heyichang, heerchang ji Taizhong
huoli fadianchang de fenxi”
[The compensating institution of public facilities
for nimby syndrome: the case studies of nuclear and thermal power plants
in Taiwan]. City and Planning 31, no. 1: 65–90.
Williams, Jack F. and David Ch’ang-yi Chang. 2008. Taiwan’s Environmental
Struggle: Toward a Green Silicon Island. New York: Routledge.
02 ch2 EMP_8P_9April21.indd 79 9/4/21 3:12 PM
